From Paul James, Commercial Manager,
The Society of London Theatre
I?m writing in response to your front page story ?Revamped Ticket Drive for London Theatre? (ArtsProfessional, issue 65, January 12). It?s disappointing that a lazy reliance on past press clippings and the endemic journalists? habit of emphasizing negatives, real or imagined, produced such a piece. It is, as we all know in our business, easier to write bad reviews than good ones.
For the record, The Mayor of London?s ?Get Into London Theatre? ticketing promotion in 2003 (as well as in 2002) was primarily designed to provide economic support for London theatre and the many sectors of the visitor economy which rely to a significant extent on theatregoers (restaurants, hotels, bars, shops, transport); this over a period when historical slackening in demand was exacerbated by a serious downturn in tourist numbers. The great success of the promotion undoubtedly saved jobs in a range of sectors and contributed to the economic wellbeing of many theatre organisations, both commercial and subsidized.
In creating this ticketing promotion, which succeeded in achieving a national profile, we also took the opportunity to carry out some targeted marketing with a view to trying to broaden the theatregoing audience. When the full analysis of those who bought tickets was available ? and it was not available to the London Assembly?s Culture, Sport and Tourism Committee when the comments you reported were made last year ? it became clear that there had been some considerable success in this area with 35% of all bookers describing themselves as either first-time or very infrequent attenders (meaning once a year or less). Also, the ethnic mix of ticket buyers was significantly more diverse than the average London theatre audience.
I?m well aware that the same set of statistics can be used to bolster wildly divergent arguments, so I will not dwell on numbers. As far as the audience development aspect of ?Get Into London Theatre? is concerned, the key point is this: surely every audience development project in the country (unless characterized by a narrow focus on box-ticking) would like to have achieved more than it actually did. Does that make them failures? Or is it a recognition that broadening our audiences is a complex, continuous process which we should never stop working on and trying to improve?
To this end, I described price promotion as a blunt instrument in the context of audience development. Just so ? though an instrument which, as the figures show, still achieved a degree of success in the 2003 promotion by the simple means of alerting a broad range of people to the discounted ticket offer. What I did not say was that price promotion proved to be a blunt instrument ? with the implication of past failure inherent in that ArtsProfessional-invented phrase.
You also say ?Limited evaluation was carried out on previous ?Get Into London Theatre? schemes.? Not so. The very statistics that critics have used to their own ends were provided by a comprehensive and professionally managed evaluation programme.
I realise that, when all is said and done, this is a rather tiresome letter prompted by a rather tiresome article. But, as we have seen in this very instance, there is great danger in allowing inaccurate press reports to enter the archives and become somehow canonical. ?Get Into London Theatre? is an imaginative initiative created by the Society of London Theatre for the Mayor of London. It is not perfect and never will be ? but it is achieving good and worthwhile things in a field that needs boldness and positive thinking far more than hackneyed and misdirected criticism.
The editors respond:
ArtsProfessional?s editorial policy is to prepare its news stories from primary sources, not from other media publications, and although criticism of the ?Get Into London Theatre? ticketing promotion has been widely published in other media, this story was prepared without reference to these. All the reported comments and statistics were taken from published or first-hand sources, as follows:
? The Culture, Sport and Tourism Committee?s response to the Mayor?s draft Culture Strategy (March 2003)
? Report Number 5 to the Culture, Sport and Tourism Committee, ?Theatre tickets?, by the Director of Secretariat, London Assembly (December 10, 2003)
? Minutes of the meeting of the Culture, Sport and Tourism Committee, December 10, 2003, 2.30pm
Telephone interviews with: Sebastian Cheswright, Society of London Theatre (January 5); Paul James, Society of London Theatre (January 6); Emma Coulthurst, Visit London (January 6 and 7).
Email correspondence with Saba Master, Committee Administrator, London Assembly.
Fax copies of correspondence from: Meg Hillier, Chair, Culture, Sport and Tourism Committee of the London Assembly, Greater London Authority, to Emma St Giles, Senior Policy Adviser on Creative Industries and Tourism, Greater London Authority (April 2, 2003); Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, to Meg Hillier (April 7, 2003); Emma St Giles to Meg Hillier (May 2, 2003); Meg Hillier, to Emma St Giles (September 8, 2003); Emma St Giles to Meg Hillier (October 14, 2003).
Before ArtsProfessional went to press, we twice left messages for Paul James to contact us, in order to obtain a more detailed account of the financial breakdown of the ticket promotion, and a copy of the evaluation of the 2003 ?Get Into London Theatre? promotion. (This was due to be published in September 2003, but does not appear to be in the public domain.) He did not return these calls.
With regard to specific points:
In his criticism of our piece, Paul James implies that audience development objectives were not a primary purpose of the scheme. However, Emma St Giles, Senior Adviser to the Mayor, has stated that the ?objective of encouraging a more diverse audience? was ?an integral part of the campaign right from the start.? In terms of evaluation, he rejects our view that the evaluation process had previously been limited: but he has himself described the evaluation of audience development as ?a learning curve? for SOLT, and it has been documented that ?no rigorous evaluation of the initiative was conducted? for the first ticket scheme. £7,000 was spent last year, in comparison with a budget of £25,000 this year. Our records confirm his assertion that he described price promotion to us as a ?blunt instrument? but we have no record of his use of the word ?proved?. We apologise if we misrepresented him on this point.